by Scott Stephenson for the Sarnia Observer
(2003) The last big construction boom in the Chemical Valley occurred almost 30 years ago [Editor’s Note-story written in 2003], fueled by the creation of Petrosar.
As the country moved out of the 1960s and into the 1970s, Sarnia’s petrochemical industry was ailing. Foreign competition, based on low costs for raw materials, was brutal. However, just as a group of residents had done almost an entire century earlier to form Imperial Oil, three companies – Polymer (later Polysar), DuPont, Union Carbide – and the Canada Development Corporation took a chance and joined forces in 1973 to create Petrosar (now NOVA Corunna.
During its peak construction phase in the summer of 1974, there were approximately 2,400 tradespeople and contractors on site. Throughout the course of construction, approximately 7,000trades people worked on the project, including more than 1,000 Americans.
Located on 430 acres on the southeast corner of Petrolia Line and Highway 40, in what was then Moore Township, Petrosar was conceived as a world scale refinery based on western Canada crude oil which could produce a billion pounds per year of ethylene, plus substantial quantities of other projects such as propylene butadiene.
According to a History of the Chemical Valley Industry in Lambton County by Dick Ford, announcement of the $750 million Petrosar project plus the rising costs of oil in world markets brought on by the OPEC cartel led to the biggest building boom in Sarnia’s history. Union Carbide also announced plans to build a $170 million polyethylene plant just down the road from Petrosar near Mooretown. Prior to construction of this plant, Union Carbide’s only presence in the area was as a supplier of nitrogen to local industries from a small gas separation plant located between Imperial Oil and Polysar.
DuPont also decided to double the capacity of its local polyethylene plant located at Corunna while Shell Chemical started to work on units to produce isopropyl alcohol and polypropylene plastic on land adjacent to the Shell refinery. And Polysar announced plans to build a world scale styrene monomer unit and a new butyl rubber plant.